U.S.S.R.
4.903 trillion US$ |gdppercapita = 16,755 US$ |literacy = 99,9% |cctld = .su |time_zone = 11, UTC+03:00 to UTC-12:00 |common_name = Soviet Union}} The Soviet Union (Russian: Советский Союз, tr. Sovetskiy Soyuz), also officially known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Russian: Союз Советских Социалистических Республик, tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik), abbreviated to USSR (in English) and CCCP (in Russian), is a socialist state on the Eurasian continent. A union of 15 subnational Soviet republics, its government and economy are highly centralized. The Soviet Union in its current form was (re-)created on the 20th of December 2016, when the governments of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Abkhazia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova, South-Ossetia, Taijikistan, Transnistria, Turkmenistan and Uzbekhistan declared the Belavezha Accords (1991) and the Treaty of the Creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (1992) defunct and invalid, and thus restored the 1989 Constitution of the Soviet Union in force on the entire territory of the former (and now current) Soviet Union. At 20h00 on the 20th of December the red flag with the hammer and sickle was once again raised over the Moscow Kremlin. The Soviet Union stretches 11 time zones. Name The word “Soviet” is derived from a Russian word meaning council, assembly, advice, harmony, concord, and all ultimately deriving from the Proto-Slavic verbal stem of *vět-iti "to inform", related to Slavic "věst" ("news"), English "wise", the root in "ad-vis-or" (which came to English through French), or the Dutch "weten" (to know; cf. "wetenschap" = science). The word "sovietnik" means councillor. In some cases, due to the length of its name, the state is referred to as the "Soviet Union" or the "USSR" especially when used in the Western media. It is erroneously called "Russia" as well in some encyclopedic sources. Geography With an area of 22,402,200 square kilometers, the Soviet Union is the world's largest country. Covering a sixth of Earth's land surface, its size is comparable to that of North America. The European portion accounts for a quarter of the country's area, and is the cultural and economic center. The eastern part in Asia extends to the Pacific Ocean to the east and Afghanistan to the south, and, except some areas in Central Asia, is much less populous. It spans over 10,000 kilometers east to west across 11 time zones, and over 7,200 kilometers north to south. It has five climate zones: tundra, taiga, steppes, desert, and mountains. The Soviet Union has the world's longest border, measuring over 60,000 kilometers, or  1 1⁄2 circumferences of Earth. Two-thirds of it was a coastline. Across the Bering Strait is the United States. The Soviet Union borders Afghanistan, China, Slovakia, Finland, Hungary, Iran, Mongolia, North Korea, Norway, Poland, Romania, and Turkey. The Soviet Union's highest mountain is Pik Gagarina in the Tajik SSR, at 7,495 meters. The Soviet Union also includes most of the world's largest lake, the Caspian Sea (shared with Iran), and Lake Baikal, the world's largest freshwater and deepest lake, an internal body of water in the Russian SFSR. Politics The Soviet political system is a one-of-a-kind particularity. There are four power hierarchies in the Soviet Union: the legislature represented by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, the government represented by the Presidency of the Soviet Union and subordinate to the presidency the Council of Ministers, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) (the only legal party and the ultimate policymaker in the country) and the Constitutional Court. Communist Party At the top of the Communist Party is the Central Committee, elected at Party Congresses and Conferences. The Central Committee in turn votes for a Presidium, Secretariat and the General Secretary. Now, although it depends very much upon the degree of consolidation, the General Secretary is the de facto highest office, since the General Secretary is the Chairman of the Presidium, a member of which always holds the office of President of the USSR, an arrangement which effectively leads the General Secretary to be a higher authority than the President within the party-state integrated power structure. Current General Secretary Aleksei Gagarin also holds the office of President of the USSR. The Communist Party maintains its dominance over the state largely through its control over the system of appointments. All senior government officials and most deputies of the Supreme Soviet are members of the CPSU. The institutions at lower levels are overseen and at times supplanted by primary party organizations. There is a degree of versatility of opinion within the CPSU, though factions are officially banned. Supreme Soviet President & Government Judicial System